Reviewing the Mail: Week of 7/29

Every week, your host -- the laziest of all book-bloggers -- posts on Monday morning a lightly annotated list of the books that arrived in his mail the week before, in a transparent attempt to dodge the fact that he fails to review most of the books that he does receive.

That time has come around once again.

I have two books this week, neither of which I've read yet and neither of which I can promise I will read any time soon. Maybe I will, though! Hope is free and never-ending.

Those two books are....

Go Forth and Multiply, a new reprint anthology -- those words in that order mean "a bunch of great stories that originally appeared other places, gathered together by an expert for your reading pleasure" -- edited by the estimable Gordon Van Gelder and published by the previously-unknown-to-me Surinam Turtle Press. It collects a dozen stories, from 1949 through 1974, on the subject of repopulating the world (or a world) with humanity -- a topic I don't think has been the subject of any anthology before. It's got stories by well-known names like Poul Anderson, Damon Knight, Randall Garrett, Kate Wilhelm, and Robert Sheckley, but also from people I don't know like Sherwood Springer, Alice Eleanor Jones, and Rex Jatke. It's an anthology with a new idea, assembled by an expert, with a quirky list of stories -- what's not to love?

And then I have the new book in the Imager Portfolio series by L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Assassin's Price. (I find assassins are sometimes very expensive, but if you wait for sales and use coupons, you can obtain their services for a quite reasonable rate.) This is the eleventh book in a  series I've never read, so what I can tell you about it is that it features a guy named Charyn and that it follows the books Madness in Solidar and Treachery's Tools (which I suggest you read first). This is a Tor hardcover the hit stores last week.